Menelaus, the wronged Spartan king whose marriage launched the Trojan War
Menelaus is the husband whose wife Helen left with Paris, prompting a thousand ships to sail for Troy. Yet ancient writers could not agree on what happened next: whether he spared Helen out of pity or desire, or whether, as Herodotus claimed, only a phantom Helen ever reached Troy.
In Greek myth Menelaus was king of Sparta and the younger brother of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. The usual story, followed by Homer, makes them sons of Atreus, though another tradition says their father was Atreus's short-lived son Pleisthenes. After a savage family feud, their uncle Thyestes seized Mycenae and the brothers fled into exile, sheltering with the kings of Sicyon and Calydon before returning to reclaim power. Homer calls Menelaus xanthos, usually translated fair-haired, and a later writer pictured him as auburn, handsome and pleasant company.
His marriage came out of a diplomatic trap. So many princes wanted Helen that her stepfather Tyndareus feared offending the losers. Odysseus solved it by having every suitor swear to defend whoever won, in return for help courting Penelope. When Paris later took Helen to Troy while Menelaus was away in Crete at his grandfather's funeral, that oath let the brothers summon a fleet of a thousand ships.
The Iliad gives Menelaus real moments of glory. He thrashes Paris in a duel, only for Aphrodite to whisk the Trojan prince to safety, and he is wounded by an arrow that Athena deliberately keeps from being fatal. Later tradition put him inside the Trojan Horse and had him kill Deiphobus, Helen's new husband. Four different versions describe his reunion with Helen, most ending with his anger melting at the sight of her.
The Odyssey shows the couple back in Sparta, apparently content, though some readers notice he undercuts her flattering war stories with one of his own. Storms had driven his fleet to Egypt, where he had to trap the shape-shifting sea god Proteus to learn the way home. Their fates diverge sharply by source: Homer says Menelaus was destined for Elysium rather than death, while Pausanias reports the pair were buried at Therapne, where they were worshipped at the Menelaion.
Source: Menelaus
